This project is designed to isolate, identify and quantitate lens gangliosides in selected animal lenses and in normal and cataractous human lenses. To accomplish this objective, application will be made of the modern techniques of high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC) as complements to the more traditional methods of column chromatography and thin layer chromatography. Neither HPLC nor GC has been applied previously to analyses of lens gangliosides although both have been used in ganglioside analyses of other tissues. If successful, this study will alleviate the present, almost total lack of information concerning the kinds and amounts of gangliosides in normal and ataractous human lenses. Since the widely varied and often complex roles of gangliosides in metabolic processes have only recently begun to the appreciated and understood, this study should provide a basis, and hopefully an impedus, for additional fundamental research associated with the human lens.